Nebula. It’s a video streaming service that is ad free and directly supports the creators.
It’s crazy that we live in a time where you have to add to your answer that it is ad free
As a fan of Jet Lag and the crew, it pains me how expensive it is outside the US.
Um subscription to what? Is none an ok answer?
I pay for my fibre, and my phone. They’re indispensable.
Oh and a VPN
I can see why people pay subscriptions for media, but people who pay subscriptions for software or services are a massive problem. If people refused to use a service as soon as it turned to a subscription model, the idea would’ve died out
Nope, folks are fucking stupid
What’s wrong with paying a subscription for a service that requires resources to continuously operate, such as email hosting?
I don’t think of phones as subscriptions but ok, yeah, they are somewhat needed, so fine, especially if you use it enough.
A reputable VPN, preferably with port forwarding (I use AirVPN, $5/mo and I have no problems with it.)
A Usenet provider and indexer (Newshosting is reasonable; nzbgeek offers a lifetime subscription)
Do you use the VPN to hide your traffic or to access foreign streaming sites?
Yes. And to watch porn when I’m visiting family in Texas.
Wait, you can’t watch porn in Texas? 😂
I pause to appreciate their concern for my soul as I set my location to Kazakhstan and grab the lotion.
Yo, we don’t ask that kind of questions here!
Narc
Paying the subscription for The Great Courses is absolutely insane value if its something you use regularly. Its not a credit system like Audible, its literally unlimited streaming of university level courses for 20$ a month (or like 12$ if you pay annually). The individual courses can cost upwards of 100$ so even if you only take one course every two months you still haven’t lost money.
It’s infinite learning, i cant shill hard enough.
my library gives them to me for free through hoopla
Thats awesome! Do they offer the whole catalogue?
afaict
Oh this seems like something I’d be interested in for sure. Thank you!
You bet! It’s even better if you have a braindead job like I do, then you can spend all day learning and getting paid for it.
Youtube and OCW have infinite amounts of that, why pay some company?
Because they don’t want to sift through tons of garbage to find the good stuff. I presume.
YouTube Premium. I watch a lot of content on YT. I work from home and will generally have something on in the background while I work, so I’m easily consuming 10+ hours of content a day. It’s honestly worth it for me, if for nothing else than to avoid the cat-and-mouse hellscape of adblocking. I’d rather pay $25 each month and have everyone in my family have an ad-free experience on all their devices no matter where they are or what network they’re using, than having to help them troubleshoot browser extensions and DNS settings and PiHoles and all that.
Edit: Absolutely insane that people are upset that I pay for a service I make use out of, lmao
It also pays the creators better than ads ever did or ever will.
Sure you could pay them all individually, but that gets tedius real fast when you like hundreds of channels.
Yeah, I’ve got a lot of channels I subscribe to. I don’t know the total count right now, but last I checked it was 100+. Some of them are daily/weekly uploaders, but I think a majority of them are much less frequent. If I had the means, I’d rather financially support those creators directly, but that’s just impossible for me right now. So at the very least, I’m making my views more valuable to them.
It’s funny to me that people have such a problem with YouTube Premium. There are a LOT of reasons to criticize YouTube/Google, but YouTube Premium is about as close as it gets to the platonic ideal of a video subscription service. It completely banishes any ads you’d get without paying, and it provides the creators you watch with more value than someone watching without premium. If showing ads is unacceptable, and paying to not see ads is unacceptable, then what’s the alternative? People have to make a living, and servers don’t run on magic.
It’s funny to me that people have such a problem with YouTube Premium.
Just means you don’t see or agree with their point of view.
YouTube Premium is about as close as it gets to the platonic ideal of a video subscription service. It completely banishes any ads you’d get without paying
I don’t understand what you mean here (could be because English isn’t my native language). For YouTube premium, you still need to pay. So how does it banishes ads without paying?
Anyway, you still get in-video sponsors which doesn’t get automatically skipped by YouTube’s “premium”. A lot of people (included myself) find premium expensive for what it is. I, personally, don’t need the whole package for €15-20/monthly. It could’ve been like €5/monthly to remove ads.
Sure one could use advantage of currencies but ain’t worth it when there’s uBlock Origin + SponsorBlock for Firefox, SmartTube for TV, uYou+ for iOS and ReVanced for Android.
If showing ads is unacceptable, and paying to not see ads is unacceptable, then what’s the alternative?
It is not that’s “unacceptable”, it is the price and ‘value’ you get out of it.
People have to make a living, and servers don’t run on magic.
Google/ YouTube (whatever) as a company are immensely rich. Toning down the price or change their tactics won’t hurt them so much. But of course they won’t, I would not either because eventually there are people who will gladly pay the €15/monthly. So why change?
I had did a premium trial and totally agree. I am always suprised by the people who expect a service as big as youtube to be entirely free.
As predatory and invasive as google is, its still a small miracle that theres a free add supported tier.
I subscribe to YouTube Premium because I do watch a lot of YouTube plus you get YouTube Music included. I wanted to switch to Spotify but after years without seeing ads on YouTube, I don’t think I can go back.
Proton Mail. High quality mail service where they don’t mine your emails for data to sell. It’s like 4-5 bucks a month depending on how you pay and it’s been worth every penny.
They are always giving you goodies as a bonus for being a subscriber. I second the proton subscription
Your highest quality local newspaper (includes online).
public library
here the subscription fee for one year is about as expensive as a single book.
Outstanding journalism from four independently-minded journalists doing their own thing.
Thanks for sharing, looks great.
- A privacy-respecting mail service: I use mailbox.org since it follows email standards, but I think many ppl like Proton mail/Tutanota. Recommend because they are privacy-respecting, and self-hosting email is way too difficult
- More of a yearly subscription per-se, but a personal domain from any domain registrar. Recommend because why not? There are so many cool things one can do with a domain: custom email, your own blog, professional website for job, …
- A VPS from Linode (or any reliable provider). Recommend because some things are better done on a VPS… and I want a public-facing IP that is not directly from my bedroom
- I used to have subscriptions to the local arcade. Recommend because I basically get cardio workout on the DDR machine (and it costs less than a gym. And easier to cancel)
Volumio - Multiroom audio service. You install the os on a pi and hook up some speakers. The basic streamer is free for local files on a single device at a time. I paid $200 for a lifetime pass a few years ago. That gets you multiroom synced audio like Sonos and lets you add in streaming services.
Qobuz - Music streaming service. Much higher quality than Spotify, no shitty MQA like Tidal. They will have articles diving into a genre, band or record label with links to notable albums. It’s “station” playlists and similar artist recommendations are garbage but I’m more of an album person.
Fyi, Tidal dropped MQA in July and moved to using FLAC. https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/06/tidal-officially-dumps-mqa/ I like Qobuz too, and I support and encourage their mission in the streaming world. But personally I find more of my favourite artists are available on Tidal than on Qobuz. Unfortunately I find the tidal “station”-style playlists are also garbage. Nobody has a chance to effectively compete with Spotify’s algorithm on that front.
I’ve never heard of Qobuz before but just signed up for the 30 day trial. Thank you!
I like Qobuz, but it’s worth noting Tidal has discontinued their usage of MQA in favour of FLAC across the board.
Never heard of Qobuz. Been looking to replace yt music. Their algorithm is trash.
Ugh I miss play music. It was such a good service. YT music was a joke as a replacement.
Monthly Donation to Lemmy Dev or to your favorite FOSS dev.
You know why!
More like a yearly subscription, but Down Dog. Keeps me active and I never get bored with them because the app is very customizable!
Do you do the yoga or which classes do you do?
I only use it for yoga, but a friend also uses it for meditation and rotations
Having my Nextcloud instance for file storage, podcast, syncing my phone and photos, etc.
Tidal for music is 10x better than Spotify if you need music streaming. Otherwise buy albums on bandcamp.
GeForce now. As long as you have streaming speed Internet you can play so many games, at such high quality.
Microsoft game pass, I haven’t tried it with the above because I don’t have great Internet (I’ve got grandfathered into the intro price of GeForce now, I’m not canceling it, I’ll have better Internet some day), but it’s better than browsing games at my blockbuster/warehouse/Hollywood video back in the day.
YouTube premium. I’ve only listen to ads when I’ve first turned on a new phone, every time I do I count my money as well spent. Add in YouTube music (much better than Spotify imo) and I’m good for 95% of my media input.
A hundred bucks a month on various content creators. Not listening to ads in my podcasts, not having to fast forward and rewind, and supporting the people who make my life happier, it’s a win win.
For Microsoft Game Pass I look for deals on cdkeys.com or eneba.com and get Ultimate for $6-7/month. Been doing it for years.
